A Thinky Jewish Holiday

December 10, 2021

A New Scroll of LA Jewish News

Folks,

Leading Jewish Lights Over Broadway tours has been a wonderful experience, and I hope you can find the time to join us one evening. Surprisingly, the Broadway Theater District presents a fascinating neon-framed window into Los Angeles Jewish life from the city’s earliest decades until now. From this historic streetscape we can find vestiges of early Jewish pioneers, Harris Newmark, one of the city’s earliest merchants, Leopold Harris of Harris & Frank men’s clothiers, and Simon Nordlinger, who sold silver and fine china. On Broadway, we also find the stories of our families, the future clothiers and movie makers,tobacconists, and grocers who often came to America with little more than their ambitions.

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Shabbat shalom, and
A thoughtful Goshna
Edmon J. Rodman
 

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GUIDE FOR THE JEWPLEXED

A shot at another Jewish holiday

The proposed Jewish holiday of Goshna puts us all to the test.

Edmon J. Rodman

I know it seems audacious, especially while you are putting away your menorahs and Chanukah decorations, but it’s time for another Jewish holiday. At least I think so.

“Another Jewish holiday?” you might ask, “Don’t we have enough already?”

If anything, in this time when the nation seems kept from COVID-19 recovery by people making scary and selfish decisions about not getting COVID-19 vaccine shots, we are reminded of the critical importance and lasting legacy of our decisions; how they can push us forward, or tie us down. And what better way to enshrine this lesson than in a Jewish holiday.

“That doesn’t sound very freilach. Can’t you come up with something happier? With another surge on the way we could use some relief. Not that we’re the least bit interested, but what is your holiday called?”

It’s called Goshna. It means “to Goshen,” as in the land of Goshen, and the word appears only in this week’s Torah portion, Vayigash. “Goshna” comes into play as Joseph, making preparations to move from Canaan to Egypt directs his son Judah to go ahead “to point the way before him to Goshen.”

“And for this you want a holiday?”

Let me explain. On Chanukah, we celebrate our hard-won freedom, if only temporary, over oppression. Commentators view Goshna as a kind of going up, the act which begins the series of events which leads to the receiving of the Torah. Yet, “Goshna” and the subsequent move to Egypt leads to our enslavement. People who make the decision to refuse the vaccine limit our freedom as well, and it is those kind of decisions, the ones that lead down a path to human suffering, that Goshna seeks to remember.

“What a downer, and right after the Festival of Lights, too.”

Depends on how you see it. Think of Goshna as lighting the menorah in reverse. Lessening the light a little, as the candles are extinguished one by one, forcing you to focus your thoughts.

But Goshna could have lighter moments too.

Like other Jewish holidays, Goshna will have food, rituals, even games, to help educate, commemorate, and create the correct kavanah, intention. But it will also give you a little zetz about self-centered decision making, and how easy it is to let others diminish our freedom.

A Jewish holiday really needs a symbolic food, and in place of a flat bread like matzah, made in haste upon leaving Egypt and slavery, a yeasty, slower rising bread like a rye would be more fitting. A bread that takes longer to prepare and bake, even twice bake, would tell us that before making big, monumental decisions, we should slow down, and think about how our thinking can affect others.

Ritual is also important. On holidays like Passover and Sukkot we sing hymns of praise called Hallel, and on Tisha b’Av we say dirges to mourn the destruction of our Temples. On Goshna, we can sing songs in a minor key with lyrics about challenging the thinking of our friends, family and neighbors.

Decorative apparel for the new holiday, especially during a surge, will make a critical contribution to the holiday as well. T-shirts emblazoned with "Roll Up Your Sleeve," or "Take One For the Team," will help anti-vaxers get into the holiday mood, or some kind of mood.

As for an educational game, since, on most years Vayigash is read on the Shabbat after Chanukah,  the letters on the dreidel, nun, gimel, hey, shin, for our new holiday could be rearranged to spell “Goshna, representing a new kind of miracle: thinking things through.

It would be a miracle if everyone considered where their decisions might lead, and agreed to be vaccinated. For that we could have the happiest holiday ever.

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Have the blahs from the fa-la-la-la-lahs?

Even at this tinsel time of the year, the re-lit neon lights of LA’s Broadway shine through with the little-known story of the city’s Jewish history. Many of street’s movie palaces, like the Rialto, were built or owned by Jewish showmen, like Sid Grauman, and designed by Jewish architects, like S. Charles Lee. Many other buildings found on Broadway were the homes of Jewish-owned department stores, men’s and women’s clothing shops, jewelry stores, and food markets.

Over the last year, I have been collecting artifacts of Broadway’s past, researching and walking the street, getting a feel for the Jewish life that once flourished there. To share that work with you, I will be leading a walking tour of the street called “Jewish Lights Over Broadway" on Sunday, December 19, and Sunday, January 16 from 7 to 9 p.m. Organized with the Museum of Neon Art in Glendale, the tour (RESERVATIONS REQUIRED, make them HERE) will illuminate how the Jewish entrepreneurs of Broadway, many of them immigrants, filled the street with bright lights, and the city’s homes with music, the latest in fashion, and the staples required to satisfy a hungry, growing city.

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Seen On the Way: West LA

The last plate of Chanukah.

Photo by Michael Levin

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